


a dictionary of expressions

by fallencrest



Category: The Accountant (2016)
Genre: M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:33:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: The reunion, with a sense of both past and future.





	a dictionary of expressions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/gifts).



> I am so sorry I didn't get this posted in time for the deadline! Hopefully this means you will get an amazing pinch hit fic as well though. I picked up lots of bits and pieces from all your prompts (which are so good, by the way). Thanks for finally giving me an excuse to write these two. Merry Christmas!

Real faces don't look like the ones he studies on paper. He can translate back and forth now, though it's an imperfect codex and he lacks the kind of fluency most people have without study or a crib sheet. Real faces don't have eyes which are perfect circles, their ratios are not pi, and their mouths are never lines he can plot as quadratic equations. People aren't linear. Simple geometry does not apply here. He understands that, though he thinks he would be easier if it did. 

He had practiced on Braxton growing up, asked him what the wrinkle in his brow meant, played recognition games on long car rides, but never quite learnt to intuit beyond the bounds of what he'd learnt by rote.

When Braxton smiles it's big and wide and shows all of his teeth. He'd read once that animals show their teeth to scare their prey, a signal of danger which says _I'm going to swallow you whole_. He's never thought that it meant that with Braxton – but, lately, he's wondered if he's wrong.

“You're happy, aren't you?” He'd asked Braxton once, seeing that rare electric all-teeth smile. (It had been rarer then, when they were young.) 

Their father hadn't come home and Braxton had produced a stash of candy from his bag that was diverse and large enough that it might be one of every thing they sold at the tuck shop on base.

“Of course I'm happy,” Braxton had said. “Look.” As though it was obvious, as though there was a direct causality between candy and happiness. Maybe for Braxton back then there had been. 

(He doesn't like candy. Never did like it the way Braxton did which is maybe part of why he never understood.)

Braxton is smiling now, big white teeth, wrinkles forming around his not-round eyes.

“Why are you smiling?” he asks because, with Braxton, he can ask.

“Because I'm happy to see you,” Braxton says, smile not faltering. Most people would not be patient in the face of that kind of question and, in a way, Braxton isn't either because when he gets no response he says “You're supposed to say you're happy to see me, too.”

“I'm happy to see you too, Braxton,” he says. He thinks he might even mean it. Braxton is, for him, a lot of things that he doesn't have words for. The same way he doesn't have words for the lines of Pollock or the reasons he has to finish any problem he encounters. Braxton is a lot of jumbled memories; a knowledge of undivided, undying loyalty. Braxton might judge him, might hope that he'd change, learn to adapt a little better, but Braxton would never abandon him for remaining as he is.

“I missed you,” Braxton says.

“You said.” Because he remembers, sitting amongst all that broken glass, his leg bleeding, his heart and brain still somehow afire with all of it, how Braxton had said he'd missed him. He adds, remembering, “I missed you too, Braxton.”

Braxton doesn't stop smiling. 

He doesn't know what he's supposed to say next. After ten years apart, he doesn't know what comes next. He's here because Braxton wanted to see him; because Braxton, inexplicably, wants him around – which, maybe that's the loyalty thing again, some part of being family that their father instilled in them, but he really couldn't say. 

“Thanks for coming,” Braxton says, mouth closing reluctantly over his teeth, head ducking a little, “you didn't have to, you know.”

“You asked me to.” He says because it's true and, anyway, they are brothers and seeing each other is probably something they should do sometimes, if it's safe. They used to be a team and they should be one now, even if they're not the same close unit they were once, them and dad up against the whole world. 

They are in Braxton's kitchen. He'd knocked on Braxton's door, awkward and uncertain, as though he hadn't been invited. 

He'd been surprised that Braxton hadn't gone anywhere. Still the same apartment building he'd been renting the past month on this job. It's a pretty impersonal place but he guesses that's the way they were raised. Moving all the time there's not too much room for personal taste and sentimental things only serve to take up precious packing space. If you can't fit it all into a car, a van, a trailer, you're probably carrying too much. 

Braxton had offered coffee, then retracted, “you don't drink coffee, do you?” 

(“No, but you go right ahead.”

“No, it's fine, I--” and then he'd turned around and just smiled. And here they are.)

“Are you going to move?” He asks, eyes tracking over the kitchen, expensive coffee machine maybe the only thing worth keeping and, even that, eminently replaceable because only valuable in monetary terms.

“I don't know.” Braxton says, “Things look bad. I got my whole crew killed, got my client killed--” he isn't smiling now, talking a little fast before he trails off, hand running back through his hair. He doesn't think Braxton ever had hair this long before – in the military they couldn't, as kids their father never would have let them. But it seems right somehow, an expression of Braxton as himself as much as a pocket protector or a plain white cotton shirt could make a comfortable version of who he'd chosen to be. 

“You could still come out of it well, if you wanted to. Christian Wolff is dead. You can say you killed him. You were the last man standing. You make the narrative. There will always be people looking for someone with your skills and you have a good record.” He pauses, “The chatter out there is still good.” He knows this implies _I checked_ but the fact that he's here already shows that he knows a good deal about what his brother's been doing and there isn't any compelling reason to conceal exactly how much he knows.

“I don't know,” Braxton says again. It's a frustrating answer because, essentially, Braxton will have to make a decision regardless of his level of certainty about the choice he makes. 

“I shouldn't be here if you're going to tell people you killed me,” he says, a little stiltedly, shifting in his posture as though he might turn to leave. “Though I know I wasn't followed; and it's unlikely that I was seen.”

“It's fine,” Braxton says. It isn't actually fine, not unless Braxton is simply indifferent about the outcome and would be willing to burn this identity without regret if it turned out they'd compromised it with his being there. Maybe Braxton really doesn't care. It doesn't seem a proposition worth second guessing. Feelings rarely are. 

They stand there in silence until Braxton says, “I want you to stay.” And that at least is simple and presumably true. 

“OK,” he says. 

 

It's hours later, long after Braxton's had his coffee, that Braxton says “You sure you're okay with this?” 

“Yeah,” he says.

“Yeah?” Braxton repeats back at him, not moving, eyes wide, breath a little short. And it doesn't make sense that Braxton would repeat it, there's no need when he's already said yes. He'd agreed earlier, in plain terms, that he knew what Braxton meant when he said he wanted him to stay. It had been almost like a negotiation for a job. _Yes, I understand that there is only one bed; yes, I am aware –_ and Braxton still hadn't given a lot of details but it isn't exactly unexpected with Braxton, nor is the fact that Braxton would want to touch him.

“Yes. I already said yes.” His voice edges with impatience, he knows, because he's said it and he means it. He says what he means generally and he wouldn't say yes to this if he didn't want it. Maybe he doesn't need it the way Braxton needs it: he has never felt the need to ask for it the way that Braxton does but he remembers how it feels and he _does_ want it. 

They're stood in Braxton's bedroom doorway, awkwardly, as though walking into the room was like pulling the trigger, loud and irreversible, but it isn't, not really.

In the end, he makes the move himself, leans down and in until their lips press together, forgets what to do with his hands until Braxton's kissing back and he buries his fingers in Braxton's hair on reflex, the other hand settling on Braxton's shoulder. Braxton makes a noise in the back of his throat, the kind of noise that people make when you hit them but he knows he's not holding on too tight, that this is just what Braxton does. 

He presses their bodies together and the layers of fabric between them feel wrong, intrusive, suddenly much too much, but he tries not to think about it, focus on Braxton's mouth (which is hungry and open) and the sounds he makes. He smells different, but maybe it's just his clothes which smell different. He feels the same. Slight change in weight, maybe a dozen pounds of extra muscle, but the same, really, the same. 

He moves his hand down from Braxton's shoulder to his waistband, thinks he can make it all so much simpler, so much easier, if he can just get rid of Braxton's clothes. Then it will just be them, just them, like always. 

He's pulling at the hem of the shirt when Braxton gasps and pulls their mouths apart, says, “Fuck, Chris,” and Chris lets go, almost steps away. 

“OK?” Chris asks, suddenly alert, concerned, because maybe he's missed something. Maybe the noises Braxton was making weren't the same as before and – 

“OK.” Braxton says. He brings a hand up to touch Chris's cheek and Chris lets himself press his face into it a little, breathes out and tries to relax and believe it. “Better than OK.” Braxton adds, looking concerned now, too, “I missed this, missed you, so much.” 

When Chris doesn't say anything back, Braxton asks “and you? You OK?”

“Yeah,” Chris says, “Good. I'm good.” It's a lie, sort of a lie, at least. Chris knows what good feels like and it isn't this. This is so much more than good and he doesn't really have a word for it. “Can I take off your shirt?” Chris asks, a moment later.

“Fuck. Yeah. Of course.” Only when Chris goes to do it, Braxton's hand is there, too, and before he can do anything, Braxton's taking his own shirt off. 

“Easy.” Brax says, smile showing all those teeth, and Chris opens his mouth to smile back.

“Actually, I would like you to remove all of them,” Chris says, running his hands over Braxton's shoulders, his chest, the expanse of his skin which he remembers so well from childhood. Less tan now than in Asia, stretched tauter, muscle grown and a new scar in the shadow of his hip which makes Christian want to kill the man who put it there. 

Braxton barks a laugh and the sound would surprise him if he hadn't felt Braxton's chest explode with the force of it seconds before. 

Braxton pulls him in and brings their mouths together again, presses their foreheads together even as he steps out of his shoes. 

 

He wakes up with Braxton's breath ghosting over his shoulders and neck. Braxton's legs bracketed against his. If it was anyone other than Braxton, he knows with complete certainty that he would not have been able to sleep. Their father had made them share a bunk sometimes as children. The discipline was to alert the other party silently of any intruder. Consequently he is certain that Braxton will wake the instant he moves. 

The pillow beneath his cheek smells of laundry detergent and Braxton. The lack of light outside suggests that it is not yet morning. He could stay completely still until morning but he knows that Braxton will ask him how long he has been awake for and he will not lie. Still, he stays quite still for sometime, deciding what it is he's going to say.

There is the slightest sign of light on the opposite wall when he finally moves. He is sure he knows the words now: “Come with me.”


End file.
